How is CRM competence assessed?

What an assessor must see

For FNSCUS504, the register requires evidence of the ability to do five things: read data to analyse and evaluate customer segments and identify customer needs; develop service strategies, including rewards and recognition, to build customer relationships; offer premium customers targeted product and service options; build and analyse feedback reports and exception reports; and keep a thorough working knowledge of the organisation's products and services. Where the unit states no volume or frequency, its note says evidence must be provided at least once.

For SIRXCEG003, the requirement is evidence of completing the tasks its elements and performance criteria set out, in the context of the job role: providing current and accurate information and assistance to four different customers, to build customer brand loyalty.

The two units ask for evidence in different shapes: one lists the abilities it wants demonstrated, with a note on volume, and the other anchors them to the job role and names how many customers.

Under what conditions

FNSCUS504 requires assessment in a safe environment, where the evidence shows consistent performance of work typical of the customer service field, and access to common office equipment and consumables, the systems the organisation uses to serve customers, financial services product information, and organisational policy and practices.

SIRXCEG003 says its skills are to be demonstrated in a services industry environment, which can be an industry workplace or a simulated one, and requires access to relevant documentation.

So the conditions name different settings: one allows a simulated industry environment for the demonstration of skills, and the other reaches into the organisation's own systems, product information and policies.

Who assesses

FNSCUS504's own words for this are that assessors must satisfy NVR/AQTF assessor requirements. The unit dates from 2015, and those words are the unit's, not today's standard.

SIRXCEG003 states that assessors must meet the assessor requirements in the Standards for Registered Training Organisations.

Today's standards, the Outcome Standards, ask for training and assessment delivered by credentialled people with current skills and knowledge in training and assessment, and with current industry skills and knowledge relevant to the training product. In the same instrument, an assessor is the person who determines a student's competency for, or on behalf of, a registered training organisation.

Recognising what you already know

The Outcome Standards define recognition of prior learning as an assessment process: it assesses a person's relevant prior learning and experience, including skills and knowledge gained through formal and informal learning, to determine how far the person meets what the training product requires.

What a candidate must still show is competence. In the same definitions, assessment is the process of collecting evidence to determine whether a student is competent to perform to the standard the training product specifies.

In Western Australia, the Vocational Education and Training Act 1996 adds a power to match: subject to the regulations, a registered training provider may confer an approved VET qualification on a person who has not undertaken or completed the course for it, if the provider assesses the person as having the skills and competency the qualification requires. That power is Western Australian law.

The evidence, as one sequence

Put together, an assessor's path through a unit runs like this. First, the evidence the unit asks for: the abilities the register lists, collected so that the assessor can see each demonstrated, at least once where no volume is stated.

Second, the conditions: a safe environment in the customer service field of work for FNSCUS504, with the organisation's systems and policies to hand; an industry workplace or a simulated one for SIRXCEG003, with relevant documentation.

Third, the judgement: a person who may determine competency for the organisation, working to the training product's standard, with current skills in training and assessment and in the industry the product belongs to.

And where the candidate's prior learning is assessed instead, the same standard applies, because recognition of prior learning is an assessment process like any other.

For anyone weighing a course, that sequence is the practical question to put to a provider: how the evidence above is collected, in which of the settings the unit allows, and who makes the judgement.